Accepting
by ariescelestial
Summary: It's Denzel's first week in this household. "The boy already knew that he would be a burden for this family with the riskiness of his illness. He didn't need to wear out his welcome any faster."


The bar was quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator, which Denzel hoped would be just loud enough to mask his footsteps. He was breaking rules, being out of bed when he shouldn't be, and some part of him was nervous. Another part of himself was annoyed that he was even worried about rules when he had survived on his own for so long. But it was just— His mother would have understood a nightmare. Mrs. Ruvi would have understood, too. Tifa… Tifa seemed kind. She reminded him of his mother, her striking red eyes softened by kindness. But he didn't know how she took rule-breaking. It was still his first week in the house; he still felt like he was wandering unknown territory, especially when Cloud, who had brought him here, was so often out on late night deliveries, just as he was now. And Denzel had already lost his mother, and Mrs. Ruvi—he didn't want to lose Tifa over something as stupid as _misbehavior_, like how he'd insulted Rick with a dumb comment about how people had lived in the slums and pushed away the friend who'd grown up in them.

The boy already knew that he would be a burden for this family with the riskiness of his illness. He didn't need to wear out his welcome any faster.

He couldn't go back to sleep though, he'd been trying to for what seemed like forever. His eyes were dry and his throat was parched from crying and there was clean water in the kitchen. It wouldn't fix the pounding in his head, induced by the Midgar disease (_I'm going to die_, that thought had caused half the tears) but it could at least sluice off the black pus. He'd have a drink, clean up his forehead and then lie back down, and even if he couldn't go back to sleep at least no one would know in the morning that he'd had an attack or a nightmare, so close together he couldn't tell which had caused the other. No fuss, no pity, no creeping thoughts of how soon he would die and be gone. Not in their minds, anyway.

He stretched his arm over the sink to turn the faucet and filled his cup before drinking deeply from it, one gulp, two, three. Cold water was a luxury the Sector Seven Search Team hadn't had, living in Midgar's ruins; they had traded supplies for bottled water but it had always been warm, sometimes even disgustingly hot by the time it got to them. Already his throat was starting to feel better and he set the cup aside, planning to drink the rest once he'd gotten the pus off his head. He turned the tap on again, gently, careful not to make a forceful stream of water that would be noisy—

And then there was noise from elsewhere; the scraping of a key against a doorknob. Denzel froze up. _Cloud!_

Should he break for upstairs? No, he'd have to go too quickly. Tifa would certainly hear him. Not just Tifa—Cloud would as well. And he wasn't doing anything wrong, even if he still felt like an intruder in the household. He still wanted to hide though, not wanting to be caught like this by the man who'd taken him in.

Then the door opened and there was no more time to think. Denzel hastily cupped a palmful of water and splashed it on his forehead, rubbing his skin as he leaned over the sink.

"Denzel?" Cloud sounded mildly surprised, but not enough to pause in closing the door after him. The night air was still hot and muggy, and there wasn't much in spare power for little luxuries like air conditioning.

"Sorry—I was thirsty," the boy mumbled, flinching when the lights were abruptly flipped on. They weren't just too bright for his tired eyes, but made his plastered-down bangs immediately obvious.

As made clear by the simple question: "Are you alright?"

Like lying wouldn't be seen through in a snap. Denzel's shoulders hunched inward, and he made himself grab the cup to start washing it. "Yeah. Just a nightmare. I'll go back to sleep soon."

"…Ah. That's too bad."

"Huh?" That wasn't the sort of response Denzel had expected—a simple "good" or "be quick", if it wasn't pity—and he looked up at Cloud in confusion, forgetting worries about his appearance for the moment.

The man's face was impassive. It usually was. Denzel figured there was some way to read him, as Marlene and Tifa seemed to pick up on little changes in mood, but he didn't know it yet. He would have asked Marlene, but she was younger than him (and a girl), so he should be able to figure it out too. "If you're tired, you should go to bed. But I was thinking I could use some help in the office—"

"—I'm not that tired," Denzel blurted out. He was a little weary, but he knew he'd have to be more tired than this to wear his thoughts out. Cloud nodded and gestured for Denzel to wait a moment, stripping off his boots at the welcome mat before they could track mud and dirt from all over the world into the house. Denzel used the time to finish drying his cup. Then Cloud headed into the office with the boy eagerly following him, relieved for any excuse to not have to try staring at the ceiling above his bed and waiting for sleep as dark thoughts crept in.

Cloud's office—it was his room, too, if not much of one, with the cot in the corner—was a bit of a mess. That seemed to be its usual state from Marlene's comments about the household. She said it was because Cloud's mind liked to wander on him; Denzel thought there was no helping it considering what Cloud did for a living. A cool job that took you all over the world would make any housekeeping seem pointless in comparison, nice as the house was.

As it turned out, housekeeping was exactly what the man needed help with. Not cleaning exactly, though Denzel quietly thought that probably needed to happen soon as well, but sorting receipts from his delivery service. There were a lot of them, but Cloud's directions were to the point, easy to follow. Mostly Denzel just had to organize the clients' names by alphabet and take out any slips that were dated over three months ago. It was a simple job that kept his hands busy and required just enough thought to push back more morbid ones, especially when he realized with embarrassment that he couldn't remember if _k_ came before _j_ or after, and had to quickly cycle through his alphabet to recall it before Cloud caught his confusion.

It was a simple job. And a housekeeping one. At night? Denzel frowned a bit as it occurred to him, puzzled. "You didn't really need this done now."

"Mm." Cloud stayed silent a moment, bent over his own pile of receipts as well as maps he was busily marking. But then he responded, with just a brief flick up of the eyes: "I get nightmares, too. I hate trying to sleep after them. Doesn't work."

The boy looked at him with some surprise that someone as strong and amazing as Cloud would have nightmares, or be bothered by them. The man didn't seem to realize he'd said anything odd, still focused on making minor notations on Gaia's geography, and Denzel soon refocused on the receipts. But he could feel a knot in him loosening. Because Cloud's answers, blunt and simple, always seemed like ones he could trust. And the thought that he could still be strong, helpful, even if sometimes he was scared to sleep—it was a good one. Just like the thought that Cloud was willing to tell him a secret. Maybe he really had been accepted in this house, despite his illness.

When Denzel woke in the morning (he'd gotten down to the _W_s, and he'd only meant to close his eyes for a minute, seriously), Tifa was asking him if he had any preference for what would go in his pancakes. The mundane question made him forget where he was or why he was sitting upright for a moment and he murmured an answer for "strawberries, please" before the pillow placed between his head and the wall slipped. He jumped as softness was replaced by hard, unfinished wall. Then she was rolling her eyes in mild exasperation, but not at him, instead calling to Cloud, elsewhere in the house, to ask why he hadn't taken Denzel back to his room after he'd fallen asleep, or at least put him in the cot; that didn't look like it could possibly be comfortable! The answer was an embarrassed one. Cloud had thought there was no way he'd be able to avoid waking the boy by picking him up.

"I'm fine," Denzel said as he pushed himself to his feet, ignoring any soreness. "I slept great." Better than he would have if he'd stayed in his bed, awake alone, no matter how much softer it was.


End file.
